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Two of the UKs most prominent financial technology start-ups have been accused of doctoring their entries on Wikipedia in order to removecriticism.

A Wikipedia user who claimed to be an employee of Curve, theall-in-one card app,deleted the entire Controversy section of the companys Wikipedia entryin December.

Curve's Wikipedia page previously mentioned a report which alleged that only 14pc of the apps users returned every month.

Last month,Curve chief executive Shachar Bialick told the Sunday Telegraphthat a more accurate figure is 80pc and accused the media of publishing lies and untruths.

A Curve spokesman said: "Curve has always maintained transparency when updating items on Wikipedia and adheres to Wikipedias strict conflict of interest guidelines."

Starling Bank, which has signed up more than 1m customers, has also been accused by Wikipedia users of editing its own entryalong with the page for Anne Boden, its chief executive.

One Wikipedia user published a screenshot of a document which they claimed showed Starling Bank employees planning to rewrite the banks entryto make it more positive.

A spokesman for the business confirmedthat adocument had been created to discuss Starling Bank articles being flagged as"too promotional"and "written like an advertisement" and said the pageshad not been written by anyone connected to Starling Bank.

Ms Bodens Wikipedia page was updated this week to include a banner which reads: a major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.

A similar warning displayed on the page for Starling Bank since December says that parts of the page are written like an advertisement.

One Wikipedia account which has almost exclusively been used to edit Starling Bank pages deleted a section of the banks article which mentioned that it had failed to meet its deadline for launching in Ireland.

The sentence was deleted with the explanation: Too much detail.

A Starling Bank spokesman denied that the business had any connection with the account. He said an employee made edits to the article in 2018 largely to correct inaccuracies"and added that the business had nothing to do with any more recent changes and was baffled as to who was making the changes and why.

A number of Wikipedia articles about prominent technology investors in the UK were deleted in 2018 as users of the website claimed they were not notable enough. Articles about investors including Saul Klein and Deliveroo backer Rob Kniaz were removed from the site.

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Top banking apps Starling Bank and Curve accused of editing their Wikipedia pages - Telegraph.co.uk